In another study (conducted by SHRM) that I discuss in my seminars and speaking appearances, they outlined what employers believe is important to have a “globally” competitive workforce. These were the top 3 answers:

– 63.3% of employers surveyed stated it is important for college grads to know a second language

– 77.8% stated having “critical thinking” ability is key

– 73.6% said hiring new college grads that were creative and innovative was key

Lots to consider nowadays when seeking your next generation of managers and leaders!

Just for visiting my blog today you win $1 million! Isn’t that great? Just call me and give me your home address and I’ll send you the money…wait, don’t call! April Fools!!

Okay, so that’s the only prank I’ll do all day. Hey, it’s April 1st. I had to do something.

Anyhoo, back to biz…

I recently wrote a blog about how it’s “spring recruiting” time again for new college grads, and how difficult companies are finding it to attract and recruit Millennial talent. Based on that, I thought it would also be a good time for recruiters to evaluate their recruiting styles because perhaps their techniques need some dusting off. Times change…even in the world of recruiting!

Here Are 5 of His Top 10 Signs You’re an Old-School Recruiter. Check out his article to view all 10:

This is a simple list that can be used by hiring managers to determine if the recruiters assigned to them are decidedly old school.

1. They don’t use text messaging. While only 20% of the adult population utilizes text messaging, over 50% of the younger generation uses it. In fact, they prefer instant or text messaging over email by a significant percentage. If you don’t utilize text messaging to communicate with your candidates, you’re likely missing a significant portion of this new mobile phone-reliant population that doesn’t require a laptop to communicate. If you’re not aware of the new IM applications and jargon, IMHO, you are so last year! In fact, the mobile phone is becoming the next must-use recruiting platform for those smart enough to successfully utilize permission-marketing techniques.

2. They don’t blog. Having your own blog is no longer unusual, but it’s still a great way to communicate your message to potential recruits. Blogs by corporate recruiters give potential applicants a chance to get a real, unfiltered message about the recruiting process and what it’s like to work at the firm. They also provide an opportunity to make comments and ask questions before a formal application to the firm is made.

3. They don’t have a MySpace or Facebook page. If you are a corporate recruiter and you don’t have a profile of yourself as a recruiter (and as an individual person) on a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook, you are a relative dinosaur. Most old schoolers are afraid of MySpace because they’ve heard about the lurking molesters who can be on it (molesters can also use telephones, but that’s no reason why recruiters shouldn’t use them). Some think that these sites are for only young people, but the average age range of a user on MySpace is in the 30s. Facebook is the fastest growing of the two, but there are many other social networking sites that allow individuals to learn more about you as a recruiter and as a source of potential recruits. It used to be that you had to have your own personal website in order to be new school, but it’s becoming okay to use social networking sites to display your individuality.

4. They are not using LinkedIn. Business-oriented social networking sites like LinkedIn might themselves be well on their way toward becoming old school, but for now, they’re still an effective way for recruiters to become known and get referrals. Other non-resume based search approaches that new schoolers are likely to use include ZoomInfo, Plaxo, Jigsaw, Spoke.com, Passado, or GoLeads.com.

5. They don’t use news alerts. As the amount of information that’s available to potential prospects and corporate recruiters expands, you need electronic help in order to keep up with the latest news and what bloggers are saying. If you’re not using Google alerts (or a similar service offered by Yahoo!), you’ll never be able to keep track of the activities (and then comment on them to build the relationship) of your targeted top prospects. Old schoolers don’t visit Google trends or digg.com to keep on top of what’s hot.

It could be time to take a good, hard look at YOUR recruiting practices and up-date them! Many recruiters are stuck in the dark ages yet wonder why they aren’t snagging the top talent like they did 10+ years ago. And if technology intimidates you, hire a Millennial consultant to train you!! Yes, you still need traditional skills like great communication, sales technique, and “personality”, but throwing in some new 21st century tools wouldn’t hurt your efforts.

Well, this recent study certainly drives home my point that companies need to get a bit more creative and learn how to adopt Web 2.0 initiatives to reach (ATTRACT!) Millennial talent. See? It’s not me just running around trying to make “something out of nothing”. Here’s what I’m referring to:

A new report published by the Boston-based Novations Group surveyed more than 2,500 senior HR and training executives and found that companies are twice as likely to report difficulty reaching Millennials than any other employee group. The survey shows that 18.9% of respondents reported problems with Gen Y/Millennials. This figure is more than double other groups, such as off-shore employees (7%); older employees (5%); and recent immigrants (2.5%).

So just what is the best way to communicate with Gen Y now that spring graduation is looming? Novations urges recruiters to avoid gimmicks and not to expect tried-and-true ways of communicating to work. Younger employees are more “jaded,” so skip the gimmicks. “Take part in a two-way discussion, and don’t try to wow them with a fancy presentation. Don’t be afraid to turn the meeting over to your team, leverage their know-how, and take your own notes. Use less technology, and eliminate it all together for meetings with fewer than 50 employees,” says Novations executive consultant Michelle Knox.

But I believe you do need to use MORE technology to attract them to your brand. And if you need a good example of that, scroll down my blog entries to the one I wrote about how Deloitte is using YouTube to attract candidates.

However don’t abandon your good ‘ol fashioned career fairs! According to another recent study conducted by Universum, students’ preferences when it comes to gathering information about employers went in this order: Career fairs coming in first, followed by internships, company websites, online job boards, and coming in fifth, company recruiters at school.

And at the job fairs, the students say the information they prefer the most includes material on internships; current job openings; career-development opportunities; the actual recruitment process; and mentoring.

One very cool, hip, suggestion I offer in my seminars is to put this info on a Flash Drive and hand those out at career fairs versus big, bulky collateral packets. You can also drop a 30 – 60 second multimedia piece on it that includes employee testimonials, fun info about your campus/building, info about the city you are in (things to do, nightlife, housing, etc.), and much more!

Also, handing out Flash Drives can be marketed around a “we are green” message by not printing tons of collateral and killing trees. This is a message MOST Millennials want to hear!

Bye for now but visit again for more tips on attracting Millennial talent now that spring graduation is upon us!!

A colleague sent me this article today and I thought I’d share it. It’s not filled with lots of “a-ha” moments but rather the author shares his personal perspectives on the generation gap in the workforce.

At the ripe age of 46 and a half I am feeling very old. Some of that is having a teenager, which as your own parents will tell you ages you faster than sunbathing in a microwave. More to the point, as a manager I am feeling almost as old and irrelevant.

Both on this site and over at The Cranky Middle Manager Show there has been a lot of talk about the different generations in the workplace.

But recent events – one world shaking and the other just shaking my world – have convinced me there’s been a seismic change in ways I’d never imagined. Companies and their managers that understand what’s going on will have a much better time of it.

The major event is the current US election where, depending on who you talk to, the presidential election will include either a woman or an African American. (Technically the election will include a lot more people but I’m talking about the people running).

This is a big deal. My wife is beside herself and driving me crazy with her rabid support for Hillary and her distress at the current state of her campaign. My daughter couldn’t care less, which brings me to the second event. Stick with me, there’s a management lesson to be learned here.

My 14 year old daughter and her cheerleader friends were in my living room working on a routine. They had very short time to get everyone up to speed but there was only a third of the team present. What did they do?

Well, one downloaded and edited the music on her laptop while the others worked on the moves. As they invented new moves, one recorded it on her cell phone. Then they downloaded it to YouTube and text messaged their friends and told them to check it out before practice tomorrow

I stared at them like they’d just invented fire and angered the gods.

And herein lies the connection and the management lesson.

When my wife, who is a little older than I am, (I say that not to be cruel, there’s an historical point here) was a little girl, women were perceived as non-players in the corporate workplace and they still had legally mandated separate water fountains for whites and “coloreds” in the town where she grew up.

So the fact that Hillary Clinton is a woman matters greatly to her. It represents her own struggles for place and respect. She uses email, kind of, but is constantly afraid if she does something to the computer a mushroom cloud will appear over her monitor and I’ll yell at her.

My daughter has never lived in a world without women of authority in the workplace. Not only is legal segregation something she’s never experienced, but over a quarter of kids in major American cities like Los Angeles are classified as “mixed race” of some combination.

Technology is part of her world – it’s part of everything she does and she understands how it makes her world spin. In fact it’s the lack of technology that is a problem. I highly recommend making teenagers watch television without a remote if you want to see a portrait in shaking, spluttering frustration.

Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck between two generations in my own house, but going to work offers no sanctuary. For the first time in over 40 years, the workplace contains people with two very different sets of experiences. As managers we’re in the middle of both the age and technology gap, and that is the point (I told you I’d get there).

One group of workers is working with older, sometimes outdated but sometimes proven, assumptions and who understand how we got to this point in our lives and the company’s history. They know what mistakes have been made and remembers the way you solved that problem back in ’87. How different can 2008 be, right?

The other group doesn’t understand why the rules are what they are or why some people are “protected” when others aren’t and they don’t have the same assumptions about how to approach the marketplace. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Sometimes it’s just ignorance. Can you tell the difference?

One group thinks technology, while nice, is often a necessary evil and not the cure for everything. The other can think of 17 ways to do any task as long as the network is working and the Red Bull supply holds up . Some of those answers are not even in the rest of the group’s vocabulary.

You and I get to keep the two groups talking to each other and reaching for the same goals. As managers, it’s our job to not only leverage the best thinking of each group to find new answers, but to find ways to help the groups understand each other.

The possibilities are endless. Imagine someone with both networking skills and, well, networking skills. That’s the new Grail we managers quest for. I won’t depress you with stories of what happened to the original Grail questors because this one is actually within our grasps.

These generational differences mean that just as the US will not be the same after this election no matter how it turns out (and don’t count out the senior citizen white male as the final winner just yet, their win-loss record is impressive) , the workplace won’t be the same ever again, either.

So it’s our job to mind the managerial generation gap.

Bye for now! And I’ve got a never-ending stream of great info coming in to share so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any of it!

Here is an excerpt from an article I recently wrote for a women’s business magazine…thought you may enjoy the info and benefit from the tips:

As you read this, Millennial Professionals are being actively recruited prior to, and upon, college graduation. Some are already busy navigating the waters of their first professional job since being hired a year or so ago.

And companies are hiring me to consult with their HR executives and internal recruiters about attracting and recruiting Millennial Professionals, as well as conduct seminars to educate their GenX and Boomer employees about managing, motivating and retaining them. So, this isnâ€™t just me saying they are a big deal to the future of our professional workforce; companies all over the U.S. and abroad are starting to see it, too.

So, why has this new generation of young professionals turned into such a hot commodity? Why are stories about them all over the media? One key factor is the looming reality of the Boomer Brain Drain that companies across the country are going to feel over the next 5-15 years (starting now as the oldest Boomers hit retirement age). Hereâ€™s one simple statistic, out of many, from the Office of Employment Projections that will quickly put this into perspective: The average large company in the U.S. will lose 30-40% of its workforce due to retirement over the next 5-10 years. Ouch.

And we have as many GenXers on the planet as there is going to be, so the replacements for this massive Boomer exodus are the Millennial Professionals. That is why M.B.A. students are being offered amazing employment packages, starting salaries are being jacked-up higher than ever, and impressive signing bonuses are being offered. These young college grads are currently being pursued and courted like top college draft picks entering the NBA. Basically, recruiting and retaining them has turned into a big, competitive business.

Now that you have a general idea of why companies are clamoring to hire them, I thought it would be a good idea to share a few key recruiting tips with you. There is a reason companies like Disney, IBM, Toyota and many others are taking this very seriously and implementing some of these!

Attracting & Recruiting Tips:

1. Go Where They Are: Running some ads on Craigâ€™s List or on Monster arenâ€™t the only solutions. This generation has grown-up experiencing life online and congregate on places like MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube and Second Life. You should consider having a company presence in these communities to attract Millennials to your brand and make them aware of you. You can interview employees about how great it s to work at your company with a hand held video camera and post it on YouTube. Deloitte has done an amazing job posting fun videos on YouTube to attract Millennial talent, so check out their posts for ideas. Make them funny and interesting and youâ€™ll get viewers. And itâ€™s free!

2. Preach Work-Life Balance: This generation is showing up totally aware of work-life balance. They value time with family and friends, and they value their time doing things they enjoy. Boomers and Gen X employees typically didnâ€™t ask for flextime until they had been in the workforce for 20+ years. Millennials are showing up and requesting it from Day One. And companies are offering it.

3. Invite the Folks: As a whole, this generation considers their parents part of their social circle. They admire their parents, they like their parents and they respect their opinion. Perhaps youâ€™ve heard the new term â€œHelicopter Parentsâ€. It means that even when their kids go off to college they donâ€™t stop hovering over them and guiding them (a lot). Believe it or not, recruiters are now finding themselves taking a top candidate to lunch for a schmooze fest and he/she brings their parents. Recruiters are realizing that convincing the parents itâ€™s the best job for little Sally is as important as convincing Sally. Well-known companies are even creating â€œParent Daysâ€ where candidates can bring their parents to tour the companyâ€™s work environment, meet potential managers, etc.